I'm rarely the bigger person.

Sometimes it just sucks to say "Congratulations!" when you really want to be shouting "WHY? WHY YOU?" Grace and charm are not traits that come to me naturally; when I'm able to achieve them, I consider it a huge mark of maturity.

This...is not one of those times.

This is a time when I come to you tiny, graceless, without charm, and completely jealous that Intel is sponsoring Maggie Mason's Mighty Life List.

I've been writing an Uberlist* for almost a decade, and posting it online for six years. Where's my check, Intel? My life list includes plans to rock this world so hard it falls off its axis and plots a course for a distant unknown universe - CAN I GET AN AMEN OVER HERE?

I'm consoling myself with three thoughts:

1. No one knows who the fuck I am
2. No one cares who the fuck I am
3. I'm so busy right now that if someone gave me an American dollar and told me to go crazy in the candy aisle, I'd throw it back at them and start crying about how much time it took for me to do even THAT

Enter adult Danielle, who is actually very excited for Maggie, and can't wait to see what she does with this COMPLETELY AMAZING AND TOTALLY UNFAIR opportunity.

As soon as I learn how to keep tiny Danielle quiet, that is.

*The Uberlist is Nikol Lohr's idea, and I came to it by way of Kelly Sue. Intel should be paying them, too.

Updating my list of enemies.

I'm afraid of a chicken.

My neighbors have chickens. Ocassionally one of them will wander into our yard. Our set-up is difficult to describe, but our house and the neighboring two houses sort of form a community yard, with shared front and back and side yards. It's really great and convivial; dogs and chickens and kids running around, lots of impromptu conversations just because we're all outside at the same time, free fresh-from-the-clucker eggs. There's privacy, too, but CLEARLY NOT ENOUGH, as I'm about to explain in this story of VIOLENCE and ASSAULT.

On Monday morning, as I walked down the path to the gate that lets me out onto the street, I noticed something moving out of the corner of my left eye, in the patch of grass against the house. Just as I was figuring out what I was looking at, the words left my mouth and I said out loud (to no one) "OH SHIT CHICKEN." I was instantly terrified for no good reason.

So Oh Shit Chicken gave me a reason.

As soon as I said "OH SHIT CHICKEN", the thing stopped dead in its tracks, cocked it's head to look at me with its bright, evil eye, and PUFFED UP ALL OF ITS SHINY BROWN FEATHERS. I swear to you, the thing doubled in size within the span of three seconds. I figured I could either show up to work with my face scratched off Freddy Krueger-style, or just exit through the driveway. I CONTINUED TALKING, out loud, to NO ONE, saying, "I'll just go out by the driveway."

But Oh Shit Chicken was not done with me.

On TUESDAY I left the house, started to approach the gate, and noticed Oh Shit Chicken on my RIGHT side, under the Japanese maple, pecking around and generally being sinister. I'm convinced that this chicken is a)evil and b)out to get me. At night, when everyone is asleep, it sets up a makeshift temple at one end of the hen house, pops in a Sepultura CD, and prays to the gods of Chickens That Want To Rip Your Face Off while spraying the blood of previous human conquests all over the ground.

So now Oh Shit Chicken is sitting there on my right. It stops pecking around and looks at me. I, now well versed in holding conversations with chickens, say aloud "Come on, chicken, really?"

As if to prove that it was not only out to get me, but totally capable of understanding me, Oh Shit Chicken cocked it's head to the side, started to puff up again, and said, "Bock."

One lonely "bock", as if to say, "YES. REALLY."

That's all I needed to hear. This chicken has now morphed into Gandalf and I, apparently, shall not pass.

Why do people call anyone that is afraid a "chicken", when clearly they are the most TERRIFYING AND POWERFUL CREATURES IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM?

There is no one as ruthless as the Hendersons when it comes to forgetting a person exists.

Yesterday was my birthday (blergh, 32, who cares) and though I went to work, I looked forward to coming home and relaxing with Seth. On my way home I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if someone from my family called to acknowledge the fact that I was alive?" but based on past history I knew better than to let it get past a glimmering hope. When I got home and saw that no one in my family had sent a card, and my cell phone didn't ring all day*, I totally shed a few tears. Not hysterical crying or anything; much more mopey and Charlie Brownish.

You see, "out of sight, out of mind" is taken to dementia-level extremes in my clan; it's more like "out of sight, out of earshot, out of town, out of the will, Out of Africa, out of the galaxy". You'd think my family had some incredible lineage that I'd sullied, something that required their executive-level shunning. Like I burned down the plantation that had been in our family for generations shortly after mowing down the cash crops and shortly before running away to join the circus. In reality, all I did was leave the state of New York.

I'm not exaggerating - they ACTUALLY FORGET ABOUT ME. Like someone cracks open their skulls and plucks out the little Danielle nerve center. When my grandmother was hospitalized for her stroke in the late 1997, I didn't find out about it for two days. My grandmother said, "Oh, we didn't want to bother you all the way in California" but a few days later my granddad fessed up and said, "Yeah, we just forgot to call."

The forgetting carries over to my birthday. That movie, Sixteen Candles? Oh boo fucking hoo, Molly Ringwald, your family forgot one birthday. At least you get to make out with a cute guy in the end. My birthdays are a revolving mash-up of Sixteen Candles and Groundhog Day, and all I get at the end of it is a searing headache. 

So yesterday I was just moping around for a little while, laying in bed with Seth trying to figure out where we should go out to eat. And my phone rang. And it said, "Grandma." And I was happy, SO happy to talk to my family...until they called me a fatass and forgot how old I was.

Mom: Hi, honey, happy birthday.

Me: THANKS! (tears, joy, fireworks shooting off in the background)

Mom: So how old are you?

Me: (crickets) Um, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW OLD I AM?

On April 21, 2003 at 5:17pm I took the biggest dump of my adult life. It was like passing a soup can. I remember it, because it was the largest thing to come out of my body, ever. If that turd had higher brain functions, a heartbeat, and the possibility of becoming ambulatory I'd TOTALLY REMEMBER HOW OLD IT WAS AND SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVERY SINGLE YEAR FOR THE REST OF ITS LIFE.

Mom: Oh, I know how old you are. I, um, just want to hear you say it.

Me: (laughing between tears, shotgun in mouth)

Then it was my grandmother's turn.

Granny: Happy birthday, sweetie pie. I have a card for you - I'm looking at it, it's on my dresser. I forgot to send it. What are you doing today?

Me: Sitting next to Seth, deciding where to go for dinner.

Granny: Oh, is he there? Let me say hi.

Seth: Hi!

Granny: Hi, baby. Tell me - is Dani still going to the gym?

Seth: (puzzled, what the fuck look on face) Uh, yeah?

Granny: Is she losing weight?

Seth: (afraid, wondering where this is going) Yeah, she's doing good.

Granny: Good. I liked her a lot more when she was smaller.

...I kind of liked it better when they just completely forgot to call.

*It totally could have - I look at my phone once, maybe twice a week

It looks like I'm going to be reading at the Community Keynote at BlogHer. I can't tell you WHAT I'm reading, but it's going to be gooooooood.

I'm in some pretty good company - this should be fun!

Just when I think I'm forever done watching "Momversations", one of the panelists says something that makes me so mad I want to rip my tits off.

This week, the panelists are discussing whether or not they keep guns in their homes. It's a topic I've never considered discussing here, because my feelings on gun control in America are fairly cut and dry: There are people in this country that have guns and shouldn't (gangs, militias, Dick Cheney) and people that don't have guns but should (monkeys that hang out with Clint Eastwood). I'm not going to discuss guns. I AM going to point out a comment made by Dana Loesch, wherein she equates owning a firearm with her notion of feminism.

Last week, the momversaters were talking about feminism.  My jaw dropped open a few times, but none so much as when two of the momversationists said they don't consider themselves feminists because they've never burned their bras.

Giyen Kim: "I feel I don't have the street cred to call myself a feminist because I'm not out there on the front lines, you know, burning my bra..."

Dana Loesch: "I've never burned my bra, and I've never pounded the pavement or anything like that..."

I am a feminist. I can say it without provocation or any hint of irony. I believe in equal pay for equal work, the right for a woman to choose, and that there should be a fundamental inclusiveness of women in positions of power. I AM A FEMINIST.

You know what I'm not? A BRA BURNER. I just looked at a calendar for verification, and it's 2009; why are people - women, MOTHERS - still equating feminism with bra burning? Bra burning was a great statement back in the days when a bra consisted of some embroidery thread and cheesecloth. I'd burn the fuck out of a bra if it was just some muslin tied together with a stitch and a prayer. With bras like that, I'd be burning bras and throwing them out my window all day long, just to have something to do while I watched "Jeopardy". These days, you're lucky if you can find a bra for less than $4,000. When you do find one that fits well and doesn't break the bank, there's so much padding inside they look like inner tubes, and if you lit one on fire you'd likely take all of the trees and shrubbery in your town down in a blaze of glory. Not only is it archaic, bra burning is financially impractical and environmentally unsound. I'll only torch a bra if a man stands next to me, douses his wallet in gasoline, and burns that shit down to a nub.

The other thing that bothered me was the way that as soon as one of the momverpanelistas declared they were a feminist, they immediately followed it up with "I'm a humanist".  Giyen Kim says, "I believe in equal rights for everyone, and I feel that feminism falls under that...", as if it's not okay to be a proponent of women's rights in a singular fashion.

Bearing this in mind, you can understand how flummoxed I was to hear Dana Loesch, in this week's episode about firearms, say, "I  think that owning a firearm is the ultimate feminist statement." Not only do I completely disagree, but I find it difficult to process this statement from a women who doesn't even have a firm grasp on the definition of feminism. A couple of the other momversatapanelators disagreed with her, also.

Do you think that Momversations is a new media feminist tool? Does something of this caliber have to set out to be a feminist tool in order to be effective? Maybe "Momversations" doesn't have any designs towards feminism in their structural foundation, but does that free them from responsibility where feminism is concerned?